Wednesday, June 07, 2006

A play for the subscribers

Eduardo (see post below) encouraged us to write what
we were afraid of-- he encouraged us to go someplace
scary and to not worry about what our family or
friends or lovers would say but to write the
individual perhaps strange things that make us unique
and to tell the stories that come from us. And
sometimes this was successful and sometimes not but I
think we were encouraged to write in the realm of
dangerous--in other words write the kinds of plays
that are not being produced off broadway these days.

And I want to hold onto this but I want to have a play
off broadway too. How do we write true and not dampen
too much the weirdness about ourselves and still
succeed in this theatrical world? It's something I'm
wrestling with.

Because I think the audience should be challenged.
But does my work even do that? Should it? Is that
the way I should be writing and if so how do I go
about that? Or am I already writing that way? It's
hard to tell from the inside.

I wrote a play called Open Minds that I thought was
political and fierce but I couldn't get anyone to do
it although it was a finalist in a couple of contests.
Was it not a good enough play or did I not send it to
the right places or was it in fact too dangerous?

I need to write another dangerous play now. The time
has come. I'm too angry at Bush, at where the country
is going, too afraid for the future. And then after
I'll go back to writing the other kinds of plays I
write, about love and relationships and gender roles.

Of course is this really a dangerous play I have in
mind? What is it? A political satire/allegory. Will
that help at all? Will that change anything or even
make me feel better? Does it need to be out there? I
want to write the play that needs to be out there.